Psychology of the Knife attack [Part 1]

Many people talk about the need for effective knife defence. There are numerous exercises which can be done against armed attackers. For instance, the guy attacks you with a knife, you do certain move, he drops the knife, and you win the exchange. Obviously it isn’t that simple, but you get the idea. There are many of these exercises out there, and there’s nothing wrong with these exercises, as they demonstrate possible scenarios. Here, scenarios may or may not happen in real life, and you go through them in a step by step fashion during particular exercises. During these drills and exercises, the the particular external scenario is bringing out the effort. However, there is another aspect which is often overlooked, and that is the energy you bring to the situation, which can be internally driven. There is no reason energy should be triggered externally, because it is simply the basis of existence rather than some allowance given by an event.

The knife attack happens externally according to time, but your response to it is internally driven. The whole event is like a wave, it rises and recedes, and you ride the wave. The energy to ride the wave, the internal energy, happens in this very moment, if you are willing. So when you ride the wave there is a certain amount of energy that needs to be there before it rises to the peak. It is not just a case of technically planning what you will do to ride the wave. You cannot plan what to do in response to energy, you have to have an absence of preconceptions to divert your energy towards awareness and away from cognition. Of course cognition happens in training, which is low stakes, but becomes increasingly irrelevant at the peak of the wave. The peak of the wave involves vast awareness, the cognitive aspect of planning and over thinking was a brief aspect of this activity.

Say you walk into a busy bar. The energy hits you in the face first of all, and then you talk to the barman and shout across the counter what drink you want. At no point is there a guarantee that you will be heard, or that someone won’t jump in front of you with their order. all this requires situational awareness. You are not planning to argue with people or shout loudly over and over again. It is like that in any emergency situation, including knife defence. You are not actually planning to endure attacks and argue with an assailant. Instead you are looking to minimise this activity by increasing your awareness. At the same time, you do what needs to be done having become increasingly aware of your possibilities to respond.

If you walked up to the bar totally switched off, you would suddenly have to switch on and also shout across the bar to order a drink in a coherent way. During all this you would probably not have time to think of your order, and would hesitate. Many people experience this kind of anxiety, because they are not used to the hustle and bustle of the bar. In the same way, people imagine as though a knife just appears out of nowhere in front of them. Knife attackers are generally drawn to certain situations of high volatility or energy. It’s like a drug addict. You would generally find them out at night near a bar somewhere. Both are not really in tune with the environment, because it is one of chaos generally. So they are clinging to a knife, or a drug, or both. This volatile clinging, rather than relationship of mastery over the weapon, means anything can happen. In broad daylight their behaviour would be so obvious from a mile off, that you would know something wasn’t right. Obviously they would be even more dangerous here, as they would stick out more and feel less secure. However, your internal apparatus would alert you due to the contrast of peace in the environment, with the erratic behaviour of a potential attacker. So awareness is crucial.

When you try to defend the knife purely reactively, without being prepared and alert to the environment, then things happen in a state of fear. The fear gives you a boost of energy in that moment, a certain agitation which gives you a nervous energy. But this is not yet energy at its higher potential. I’m not against fear, it’s perfectly good, and it is perfectly normal in a life or death situation, but it isn’t something to look for, it is more a brief happening and something to become aware of more broadly. It gives the signal that you need to act. If the battery on your phone told you the power was low, you could go on using it at limited power or you could go and charge it up. The mind and body connection is similar, there are various cue and signals which tell you to become energised and attentive to the environment at key times, and to charge up ready.

Even when you are alert to the knife, you know it’s coming, and yet it still takes you by surprise. So to have confidence that if you just rely on some kind of technique, and just like that it will work, is not realistic. Not without the right level of energy awareness. When one is attacked by a knife, there is no necessary set up or end point of execution. It come can from anywhere at any time during an altercation. For example, if you hold the attack on the floor, all they need to do is poke you slightly at a key moment. This is why it is imperative to secure the knife arm. Therefore, what might happen isn’t predictable like an exercise. For example, with the boxers punch there is an initial set up and an execution. Boxers are trained to look for this and react. Because of the gloves or blunted fist, it is necessary to develop a certain amount of velocity in the swing for it to do damage. This takes a bit of time, giving the other guy time to react. Not so with the knife, it can be within an inch of the target quickly without much force, and still cause serious damage.

Situational awareness is crucial in knife defence. This involves becoming aware of the environment you are in, picking up the subtle cues. It is more effective to take notice of the entire environment than just the moves you might do inside of it. Obviously, this involves intensely focusing on one thing, the knife. But this focus is part of a larger whole, the eye of the storm. It is not necessary to go straight to the eye of the storm just because you know its on the horizon. This isn’t logical. So, remaining aware of everything whilst focusing on one thing, the knife – the eye of the storm, is not contradictory.

When a bird fly’s at your head, you pick it up peripherally as you sense it swooping in. Your focus is due to overall awareness. If you were not aware of the environment, it could be a bomb flying at your head, or just about anything. You then begin to fear just about anything! However, awareness that you are outside in the countryside, or wherever, gives you the knowledge that it is likely a bird flying past. Same with sport. If you’re on the football pitch, the looming object coming at you is going to be a ball. This gives a level of security that allows you to move beyond fear. At the same time, you are not just a spectator looking for the ball, you are a part of the game and understanding of what to do comes from within that game. Here, there is a totally different understanding from the spectator.

In this way your awareness narrows when it needs to, and requires no effort on your part because you are involved in the game. If you try to focus on something far away and not in your immediate vicinity and experience, this requires mental effort and you become more of a spectator. The spectator is free to analyse, but they are not in the game. However, because you are aware of the game, because the knife situation is there in front of you, there is no mental effort required, just total awareness of the urgency required to deal with the knife. Mental effort will then match the perceived urgency. Everything else just kicks in and you do what’s is needed. Even better if you do so after the training and exercises have been practiced. I’m not saying just be aware and stop training, the training is a support system which will never work without the right kind of awareness to reality.

If you try to focus on everything at once, what the attacker is saying, what type of blade they have, all these details, then this becomes a mental strain. Energy has to come from somewhere, and if attention is directed towards details at the wrong time, then response time and awareness goes down. It’s simple economics. You develop a muscle memory in training, rather than trying to acquire iron the street. If a football player tried to focus on on the football as it flew towards them, rather than orientating themselves on the pitch in the right position in anticipation, then all sorts of decisions would need to take place when they should be responding to the ball as needed. The right position, the anticipation, the positioning, all this takes place before the ball is in the air. So initially, you remain aware, ready to pick up certain environmental cues before focusing and deciding what to do.

With situational awareness, you are switched on the moment you step out of the door or into a particular environment. This is not something that any creature on Earth, other than the human being, has trouble with. The reasons for this is that humans are more cognitively advanced than other animals. Obviously, this has its advantages, but like any technology it can be mishandled. When people used to enter the coal mines, they took canaries with them, who would start to hyperventilate and become agitated if carbon monoxide was in the air. In the same way, the highly aware individual starts to sense signs in the environment before its too late. The problem is that human beings have become increasingly switched off from their environment, and they often dull their consciousness of the environment with drugs or alcohol. This is the equivalent to the canary in the cage being dead and still going into the mine.

So when you are aware, you are perpetually unsure. When the Batsmans is hitting the cricket ball, the bowler could throw any kind of bowl. Uncertainty and remaining aware to the possibilities is a must. Instead of being unsure and yet highly aware, many people have got for the self assurance of practicing scenarios and drilling them into their memory. This gives people a certain comfort and security. There’s nothing wrong with this, its valid training. They then play these over in different ways, hoping that it will amount to certainty. One of these scenarios might resemble the reality of a knife attack one day, but even then the resemblance isn’t an exactness. This drilling of scenarios is a back up system, a summary of what needs to take place at best. It is meant to keep the mind and body engaged during periods of inactivity, not as a replacement for activity within the environment or awareness of it unfolding in unpredictable ways.

So people sense they need to become more involved in situational awareness. Situational awareness is not like hyper vigilance. hyper vigilance is an excessive concentration and attention towards the early warning signs so that they become projected into the present moment. Awareness is the present moment as a whole. Memory of the past is an aspect of this. So, early warning signs are a fragment of reality, indicators of potential threat, which then manifests in front of you. So focusing only on the potential threat, or the fear of it, is a halfway house. And people build up all sorts of defence mechanisms against perceiveed threat. Have you noticed that when you face a situation of stress, after a few moments or minutes, the anxiety of the situation tends to wear off if you see it through? It is like if you start walking up a flight of stairs. At first you are tired, and then the body acclimatises. You just get better acclimatised, you don’t stop preparing for activity. Those familiar with exercise know this, however many people mistake the tiredness of the initial stage as the final outcome. Similarly, film stars know that as soon as they have gotten past any on stage initial nerves, they soon feel more confident.

The problem is that when people focus on these indicators of threat, rather than the situation as a whole, then that becomes the scope they view the whole world from. This is what leads to living in fear. Never get comfortable with fear, because it is a brief happening. Not only that, but at a certain stage of the journey it takes on a huge sphere of relevance, which gradually recedes over time. Fear is an intense feeling which breeds a lot of attachment to it, like a teddy bear that if it is held on to for too long just becomes a source of insecurity rather than strength. So depending on your level of attachment to fear or anger, it becomes either a vast experience or a smaller one. Both fear and anger can be tremendous sources of energy in the right hands, because they are so intense. The problem is when the source doesn’t lead anywhere else, it doesn’t reach maturity. The maturity I’m talking about is converting this intense bio chemical feeling into an energy form.

Whilst it is possible to act in fear, it is not a goal in itself. However, the instinctive reactions to threat are like a mirror of what’s happening. The mirror reflects light but it isn’t the light itself at the source. In the same way, the feelings of fear represent an aspect of energy which isn’t yet energy. So fear is also like a seed, which when triggered into action, sprouts into tree which is actually nothing like the original form. And yet, they are of the same source. All that has happened is that the limited has turned less limited. So with fear, it has to be accepted and responded to sensibly, rather than letting it drive and take over. This doesn’t change whether it is a knife or any other situation, because it is all dependant on you and the meaning you create for the situation within, which is your business. So I don’t want to go into which techniques are the best, because there are thousands of videos online and classes to attend, all with their own pros and cons.